Featured Composer: Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition Suggestions for using this page FEATURES: 1. Program Music - music which describes an event or situation, in this instance a visit to an art exhibition. (Autumn, by Vivaldi, describes the season so it is also considered program music.) 2. Orchestration - the piece was originally written for piano. Maurice Ravel arranged this , the most famous orchestration of "Pictures." BACKGROUND: The Composer: Mussorgsky was a self-taught musician. He was born to an aristocratic family, but lost all wealth when serfdom was abolished in Russia. He was never a successful musician and he had to work as a minor official in Russian Government for a living. He lived a dissolute life. His music is highly original - he didnt always follow the rules, in part because he was mostly self-taught. The Composition: Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition after seeing an exhibition of paintings by a friend who had just died. He went home and wrote Pictures on the piano. The Promenade, which describes walking between the pictures, is repeated throughout the longer work.

It occurs at the start of the piece in this, the begining excerpt from this work. The Gnome describes a painting of a gnome with crooked legs shrieking about wildly. It could be good Halloween music. The French composer, Ravel, arranged Mussogskys piano piece for orchestra and the Japanese composer Tomita used Pictures as the inspiration for his synthesizer work. It is fun to compare these three! QUESTIONS: Ask these questions before listening to the piece. (If possible, listen to a recording of the piece not just the Midi files on this page! Here is another place to buy a recording ): - What makes you think of walking at the beginning? What happens then? - What words could you use to describe the difference between the two parts of this selection? SOME POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES: 1. Draw a picture of the Gnome, or mime the actions of the Gnome as you listen. 2. Raise hands when Mussorgsky sees The Gnome. 3. Discuss the arrangements. Would Mussorgsky like them? Do you? 4. Learn the Promenade Theme: 5.

Listen to the rest of the Pictures at an Exhibition. 6. Older students may learn the odd rhythm of The Promenade. It is an eleven beat pattern: one bar of 5/4 and one of 6/4. Try counting it silently to yourself while you listen. Pictures at an Exhibition | work by Mussorgsky | Britannica.com Pictures at an Exhibition Alternative Title: “Kartinki s vystavki” Related Topics piano Pictures at an Exhibition, musical work in 10 movements by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky that was inspired by a visit to an art exhibition. Each of the movements represents one of the drawings or artworks on display. Although originally composed in 1874 for solo piano , Pictures became better known in orchestral form, particularly as arranged by French composer Maurice Ravel in 1922. The work was also orchestrated by other composers, such as Sir Henry J. Wood (1918), Leopold Stokowski (1939), and Vladimir Ashkenazy (1982). In 1971 the British popular music group Emerson, Lake and Palmer devoted an entire album to their own art-rock interpretation of the piece.

Mussorgsky composed Pictures as a memorial to his friend, the Russian artist Viktor Hartmann, who had died in 1873 at age 39. Shortly after the artist’s death, Mussorgsky visited a retrospective exhibit of Hartmann’s sketches, stage designs, and architectural studies and felt the need to capture the experience in music. By early summer 1874, he had completed the work, a lengthy and fiendishly difficult suite for solo piano. At the time of Mussorgsky’s death in 1881 from alcoholism, the piece had been neither performed nor published. It fell to his friend and colleague Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov to tidy up the manuscript and bring it to print in 1886. Modest Mussorgsky, portrait by Ilya Repin, 1881; in the Gosudarstvennaya Tretyakovskaya Galereya, … The Bettmann Archive The suite consists of musical depictions of 10 paintings by Hartmann, interspersed with a recurring “ Promenade ” theme, or intermezzo , that represents a visitor—in this case, the composer himself—strolling through the exhibition.

The powerful nature of the intermezzi, Mussorgsky acknowledged in one of his letters, reflects his own large physique. Following the opening “ ” the first four movements, or “pictures,” in order of appearance, are: “ The Gnome, ” a depiction of an awkward dwarf conveyed through irregular rhythms and forceful outbursts; “ The Old Castle, ” a solemn and lyrical portrayal of a medieval troubadour singing on the grounds of a grand castle ; “ Tuileries, ” a sprightly sketch of children at play in the well-known Tuileries Gardens in Paris; and “ Cattle, ” a ponderous characterization of the lumbering of a large Polish ox cart. Similar Topics The scampering fifth movement, “ The Ballet of Unhatched Chicks in Their Shells, ” represents a costume design by Hartmann for a children’s ballet. The sixth scene evokes an image of “ Two Jews: One Rich, One Poor ” through the interplay of a strident melody in the lower register and a twittering chantlike theme in the upper.

The folksy and cheerful quality of the seventh movement, “ The Market at Limoges, ” is neutralized by the eighth, “ The Catacombs, ” which casts an eerie shadow with ominous chords and variations on the recurring intermezzo. The last two scenes of Pictures at an Exhibition are the most renowned. “ The Hut on Fowl’s Legs ” is a nightmarish portrayal of the cackling witch Baba-Yaga on the prowl for her prey. She charges—bounding in a virtuosic passage in octaves—right into the tenth and final picture, “ The Great Gate of Kiev. ” With a depiction of Hartmann’s sketch of a proposed city gate topped by cupolas in which carillons ring, Mussorgsky brings the piece to a majestic close.

Classical Net - Basic Repertoire List - Mussorgsky Modest Mussorgsky (1839 - 1881) Along with Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky , the greatest Russian composer of the Nineteenth Century, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (March 9, 1839 - March 16, 1881) was born into a wealthy rural, landowning family. He began by picking out on the piano the tunes he heard from the serfs on his family's estate. At the age of six, he began to study piano with his mother. His parents initially set him out on the career of military officer. He became a cadet and finally commissioned in an elite imperial regiment. Two years later, in 1858, he resigned his commission. During this time, he met a musically-inclined army doctor: Alexander Borodin . The two became friends. In 1861, with Russia's emancipation of the serfs, his family lost significant income, and he was forced to earn a living.

In 1863, he began a spotty career in the civil service, which dismissed him at least twice. In 1856, he met the composer Dargomïzhsky, who in turn introduced him to Cesar Cui, Mily Balakirev, and a critic named Victor Stasov. Gradually, Borodin and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff joined to form a loose group known as the "Moguchaya Kuchka" ("the mighty handful" or "the mighty bunch"). All but Stasov nursed ambitions to compose, and all had very definite ideas about what Russian music should be. None of them had formal training in composition. Balakirev and Mussorgsky essentially taught themselves by playing through piano-duet arrangements of orchestral scores. For Russian composers of the time, this was not unusual. Neither Mikhail Glinka , the founder of the nationalist school, nor Dargomïzhsky had formally studied. After all, the first Russian music conservatory had been founded only relatively recently. All were, to one degree or another, amateurs. Rimsky, for example, was a naval officer, Borodin a doctor and chemist.

Most writers consider Tchaikovsky the first great Russian composer to have had thorough academic training along German lines. Mussorgsky absorbed these main ideas of the Kuchka: Russian music should express the Russian soul. Russian music should be written in a Russian way. The latter idea meant mainly a rejection of German classical forms in favor of one-off, "organic" forms. Instead of a form determining the nature of the musical materials, the materials shaped the forms – bottom-up, rather than top-down. The Kuchka got these ideas from German Romantic aestheticians and revered those artists who wrote accordingly, like Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz . Mussorgsky learned composition mainly by doing. His early efforts are in the expected short forms: songs, piano morceaux, and so on. His "apprentice" instrumental works, with the exception of his remarkable Intermezzo in modo classico (1862, describing Russian peasants stepping on and sinking into snowdrifts), are things you could get from just about anybody at the time. However, most of his early songs owe little to any predecessor.

Practically from the get-go, Mussorgsky found something original, even among Russian composers, which may arise from the fact that he alone of all the Kuchka grew up in the country, away from the city. He actually heard serfs sing daily as part of his normal environment, and the "crudities" that others tended to soften attracted him in the first place. He also had larger ambitions, encouraged by Balakirev and Stasov. He began several opera projects: an Oedipus (1858-61), a Salammbô (1863-66); and most notably The Marriage (1868), based on Gogol. He completed none of them, for one reason or another, but all of them bore fruit in later works, either by providing numbers Mussorgsky re-used or, in the case of The Marriage, clarifying his ideas of word-setting. He first thought that music should set the patterns of speech "realistically," as Dargomïzhsky had first theorized. While this was fine for songs, The Marriage convinced Mussorgsky that it would not work over a longer span, and he abandoned the opera after composing one act.

Much of the rest of is career is spent finding new expressive ways to create a melody, especially for the stage. Nevertheless, The Marriage counts as the most radical experiment in musical realism among the Russian nationalists. In 1867, Mussorgsky also composed St. John's Night on Bald Mountain (usually called Night on Bald Mountain), depicting a gathering of witches and demons for a black sabbath. While one can cite predecessors like Berlioz and Liszt for such an idea, nobody had come up with such crazy sounds before – shattering dissonance and wild cries as savage as anything in Igor Stravinsky 's Rite of Spring, more than four decades in the future. Mussorgsky revised it at least twice to fit it into later, unrealized projects – Mlada (1872, a group opera by the Kuchka never completed) and the composer's own unfinished opera Sorochintsï Fair. After his abandonment of The Marriage, Mussorgsky began working on a Stasov suggestion, the opera Boris Godunov.

The composer completed a version in 1869 and submitted it to the Mariinsky Theater, who rejected it, mainly due to the fact that Mussorgsky had provided no role for a prima donna. Mussorgsky took back the score and at once began to revise it, altering the work far beyond what the theater had asked for. In general, he moved from the musical realism of the first version to a folk-based arioso, extremely subtle and flexible dramatically. He resubmitted his new version in 1872. The theater accepted it, and after some wrangling with the censor, Boris premiered in 1874. This was to provide Mussorgsky his greatest public triumph. He was considered the young man to watch. However, all did not go smoothly. In 1865, following his mother's death, Mussorgsky began to go on drinking binges. He would disappear for days, even weeks at a time and turn up on friends' doorsteps physically ill. He had to borrow money to drink. In 1880, he lost his government sinecure. Even the lax imperial bureaucracy could no longer tolerate his unreliability.

Nevertheless, he continued to compose, almost up to the end. However, he completed very little and left two operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsï Fair incomplete. He never was a steady worker. Throughout his career, he composed in a white-hot rush and then seemed to fall into lassitude, during which time he mainly drank. His behavior, always a bit eccentric, degenerated into the erratic. His landlord kicked him out in the street for failure to pay rent. He showed up at the door of a friend, who took him in. However, after suffering seizures, he was moved to a hospital, where he seemed to rally, but it turned out he had bribed an orderly to bring him cognac. He died after roughly a month, at the age of 42. Because he began late and died young, almost all of Mussorgsky's music can be considered early work. Yet he progressed at a frankly incredible rate, went through at least three major changes of style, and even conducted successful "one-off" experiments. His songs lie at the center of his achievement and form the basis of much of his dramatic work.

There's an astonishing variety, from "realistic" portraits, to evocation of peasant song, dramatic monologues (from a child) in The Nursery (1870), psychological expressionism and a non-Wagnerian chromaticism in Sunless (1874), and a new pre- Mahler poetry in Songs and Dances of Death (1877). Instrumental works play less of a role, although even here he wrote masterpieces: the aforementioned Night on Bald Mountain and the piano cycle Pictures at an Exhibition (1874). If he had composed only the last, he would be considered an eminence in Russian music. The piece is new not only in its details (bar-by-bar meter changes, startlingly original chord progressions and piano textures) but in its form – Romantic character-pieces linked by interludes varying a basic theme, with the final variation absorbed into the last character-piece. Mussorgsky was recognized by both the Kuchka and Tchaikovsky (who came to oppose the Kuchka) as a powerful musical force. However, none of them knew quite what to make of him.

Rimsky-Korsakoff, for example, regarded some of his friend's boldest strokes as mistakes, particularly in his harmonies. As a labor of love and at considerable cost to his own career, he went about revising Mussorgsky's major works including Boris, Khovanshchina, Night on Bald Mountain, and part of Pictures. For many years, the only performances of these works were in Rimsky's editions, and to a great extent Rimsky kept Mussorgsky's name alive in the concert halls and on the opera stages. However, the myth grew of Mussorgsky the naïve genius, a pure heart who found his way to artistic truth despite his lack of skill. Scholars have pretty much shot down this myth. Mussorgsky was, if anything, too intellectual, too knowledgeable about contemporary aesthetic philosophy, too self-conscious, to the extent that his mental wrestling with himself cut down even further on his composing. However, he knew what he wanted and felt it his job to flesh out his artistic intuitions. "To new shores" became his motto. As new editions of scores have appeared, what Mussorgsky actually wrote is supplanting what his nineteenth-century editors thought he should have written.

Yet the editions by Rimsky-Korsakoff are beautiful in their own way, and I would think it a shame if they disappeared forever in an excess of scruple. After all, these versions – so "scholarly incorrect" – all by themselves exerted tremendous influence, turning Mussorgsky into an avatar of Modernism, particularly in France with Claude Debussy , Maurice Ravel , Ernest Bloch , and even Stravinsky. Mussorgsky's music challenged the hegemony of German and Italian music in the Nineteenth Century and lay outside the standard Brahms -vs.- Wagner fight. He opened up a new musical path and a new aesthetic attitude. However, it's not his innovations alone that make him so important. Boris Godunov is arguably one of the three greatest operas of its time, the work of a musical dramatist of genius. Mussorgsky's songs, so little known in the West mainly due to language difficulties, put the composer in the exalted company of Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler, and show a greater variety of expression than all three. Patronized by the Nineteenth Century, the composer became a hero to the Twentieth.

~ Steve Schwartz Recommended Recordings Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, Songs and Dances of Death, Night on Bare Mountain by Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Valery Gergiev & Ferruccio Furlanetto on Apple Music Amazing interpretation of Pictures and other works by Gergiev and the Marinsky Orchestra by KlingonOpera It is not often that I hear a recording of the orchestral version of “Pictures at an Exhibition” that makes me sit back and go “WOW”, but this SACD does just that. The dynamic range that Mr. Gergiev and the Marinsky orchestra explore is stunning and gives great depth to the performance as a whole. This is breathtakingly evident in the “Il vecchio castello” movement (track 4) – the saxophone is breathy and warm, and the mood is captivating. The horn work in track 7, “Bydlo”, is as strong and evocative as the strings and particularly the bass section – glorious. And the “Ballet des poussins dans leurs coques” (track 9) is delightfully done, making this listener grin.

Track 13, “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” is dark and gloomy, and extremely well-defined, with every nuance captured faithfully. And the closing “La grande porte de kiev” is everything you would expect it to be. Start to finish this interpretation is wonderful! The second work on the CD is Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death”, orchestrated by Shostakovich. The four songs are sung by Ferruccio Furlanetto (bass), and his voice is well-suited to the material indeed. Particularly gripping is the 2nd song “Serenade”, performed on behalf of “Death the Beau” according to the informative liner notes. The Russian language is rich and powerful throughout the entire work. The last work is Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bare Mountain”, and it is sweeping music originally composed for a play called “The Witches”. Here the liner notes provide interesting background having to do with the subject of the witches, their Sabbath, and the 6 years it took to compose the piece. Mr. Gergiev is just as at home here as he is in the two other works, and the orchestra clearly gives him everything he is asking for and then some.

A remarkable performance of this classic Russian work. The sound quality of this CD is amazing, the clarity astonishing, and the warmth and mood of the music ever present. It is obvious that the musicians and Mr. Gergiev were giving everything they had to give during the recording sessions, and we are fortunate that technology used resulted in a SACD of this quality. It is *amazing*. Highly recommended. Top Albums and Songs by Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra 1. Pictures at an Exhibition | Free Music Music Education Pictures at an Exhibition Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite composed by Mussorgsky in 1874. It remains his most popular work, famed as a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. Dedicated the work to artist and architect friend Viktor Harmann and inspired in the exhibition of Hartmann's work held after his death. Today most of the pictures from the Hartmann exhibit are lost, making it impossible to be sure in many cases which Hartmann works Mussorgsky had in mind. Though composed in 20 days, the work was printed only in 1874. This first Rimsky-Korsakov edition ...

more Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite composed by Mussorgsky in 1874. It remains his most popular work, famed as a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. Dedicated the work to artist and architect friend Viktor Harmann and inspired in the exhibition of Hartmann's work held after his death. Today most of the pictures from the Hartmann exhibit are lost, making it impossible to be sure in many cases which Hartmann works Mussorgsky had in mind. Though composed in 20 days, the work was printed only in 1874. This first Rimsky-Korsakov edition presented many mistakes. Only in 1931 was the work published in agreement with the composers manuscript. The first (incomplete) orchestral arrangement was by Mikhail Tushmalov, followed by Henry Wood, and Maurice Ravel (whose orchestration has since become the most popular version of the work). Hundreds of versions of the work have been produced since (employing a great number of ensambles), sometimes by renowned composers. A number of conductors have made changes to the scoring by Ravel, though, including Toscanini and Golovanov .

The suite has inspired homages in a broad range of musical styles: a version featured in two albums by the British trio ELP incorporates elements of progressive rock, jazz and folk music (1971/2008). less This piece contains the following parts: Classical Notes - Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Classical Classics, Peter Gutmann One of the most powerful of all creative urges is to memorialize. The results can range from the trivial statues of mounted generals that clutter our parks to the awe of the Pyramids. Yet, perhaps the most powerful creations are those which try to overcome a grievous personal loss by immortalizing the evanescent. Modeste Mussorgsky produced his Pictures at an Exhibition to perpetuate the memory of a friend. In the process, he created a monument far more massive and lasting than his subject. Mussorgsky was an ardent Russian nationalist, but he was far more interested in folk art than in the grandiose ornamental designs of the aristocracy.

(Or, as Tchaikovsky put it, He likes what is coarse, unpolished and ugly.) Mussorgsky's career began in the military, but he resigned from the life of a fastidious officer to study music and supported himself as a civil servant. Modeste Mussorgsky Yet, his soul was far less complacent than one would expect from a life-long bureaucrat – he lived in a commune and the radical ideology he absorbed there infused his music, as he devoted himself to seeking truth in art by crafting a natural style without classical artifice. Victor Hartmann was a close friend who shared Mussorgsky's ideals in his own field of architecture and painting. Victor Hartmann When Hartmann died in 1874, aged only 39, Mussorgsky was devastated. In abject bitterness, he wrote: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat live on and creatures like Hartmann must die? But soon his incomprehension took a more constructive tack. The following year saw a memorial exhibit of 400 Hartmann works, including sketches, watercolors and costume designs. Mussorgsky was deeply moved.

Seized with inspiration, he quickly reacted to the exhibition by writing a suite of ten piano pieces dedicated to the organizer. The work opens with a brilliant touch – a promenade theme that reemerges throughout as a transition amid the changing moods of the various pictures. By alternating 6/4 and 5/4 time, its regular metric walking pace is thrown off-balance and cleverly suggests the hesitant gait of an art-lover strolling through a museum, attracted by upcoming pleasures but hesitant to leave the object at hand without a final glance at a telling detail.

The ten pictures Mussorgsky depicts are: a gnome-shaped nutcracker; a troubadour plaintively singing outside an ancient castle; children vigorously playing and quarrelling in a park; a lumbering wooden Polish ox-cart; a ballet of peeping chicks as they hatch from their shells; an argument between two Warsaw Jews, one haughty and vain, the other poor and garrulous; shrill women and vendors in a crowded marketplace; the eerie, echoing gloom of catacombs beneath Paris; the hut of a grotesque bone-chomping witch of Russian folk-lore; and a design for an entrance gate to Kiev. Mussorgsky clearly chose these subjects for the variety of moods they invoked and the opportunities they presented for a wide array of musical depictions. Hearing the work today conjures visions of grand, imposing pictures of exquisite delicacy, profound atmosphere and blazing glory. Such is the power of abstract art. Musicologist Alfred Frankenstein scoured Russian archives and managed to find 70 of Hartmann's works, including most of those that had inspired the Pictures, and published them in 1939. The result is quite a surprise – the graphics are modest, conventional and barely remarkable.

The drawing of the chicks shows two dancers stiffly modeling plain ballet costumes of egg-shells topped with a few feathers. The witch's hut is merely an ornate clock. Even the subject of the towering finale that so fired Mussorgsky's imagination to depict a triumphant procession passing through a mammoth gate to honor the czar is but a brick archway decorated with wrought iron, tiles and stained glass, with a few well-dressed people loitering by and a horse-drawn cart about to enter. (Hartmann's image is shown on the album cover at right.) Alcoholism and severe depression not only cut short Mussorgsky's life but plagued his most creative years and prevented him from advocating his work, which succumbed to the dismissive attitude of the cultural gatekeepers. Fame came only after his early death at age 42, when well-meaning admirers indulgently undertook to edit his operas in order to correct what they perceived to be artistic flaws, lapses of inspiration and overall carelessness. Only in more recent times have the originals been revived to display their frank elemental power. The Pictures at an Exhibition met a similar fate.

The score remained unpublished until 1886, five years after Moussorgsky's death. But then, almost immediately, an amazing phenomenon began – while the original version generated little interest among pianists, over two dozen composers were seized by a compulsion to orchestrate it. By far the most famous was by Maurice Ravel. Commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in 1922, his was a propitious choice – Ravel's version strongly underlines the mood of each piece, from the woodwind chirping of the chicks through the reverberant, dark brass of the catacombs, the percussive terror of the witch and especially the blazing brass and pealing carillons of the finale. Koussevitzky was not only a great conductor but a wise businessman – his deal with Ravel included in five years of exclusive performance rights. Koussevitzky led the new work to great acclaim with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of which he had just become music director (and where he would remain for 25 glorious years).

Their 1930 recording (BMG 61392, Pearl 9020 or Naxos) is entitled to a particular aura of authenticity. Koussevitzky had an uncanny ability to invest every work (even the vapid patriotic stuff he recorded during World War II) with an aura of musical integrity, sincere expression and deep human communication. Some have claimed that his Pictures lacks the character and overt excitement of interpretations that more forcefully emphasize the individual color and drama of each section (or, as one put it, at the time of Koussevitzky's recording the paint was not yet dry). Yet, Koussevitzky instead chose a more subtle approach: by melding the disparate pieces into a musically-unified whole, he underplayed the awkwardness of the contrived structure and attained a more convincing result.

(A 1943 concert (Naxos 110105) is more conventionally dynamic but heavily cut, omitting two entire episodes, a rather curious approach by the same conductor who had commissioned the Ravel original.) The potent combination of Mussorgsky's varied moods and Ravel's vibrant orchestration have made their Pictures hugely popular with both critics and audiences, a rare accord of popular and professional esteem. While it flourished in concert and on 78s, the advent of the LP (on which it fit neatly) and burgeoning consumer interest in home sound systems boosted its appeal yet further. Of the bounty of recordings that have proliferated since Koussevitzky's (over six dozen in the current catalog alone), nearly all convey the essence of this foolproof score quite well. Perhaps out of deference to the intrinsic strength and forthright character of the music, most add only minor interpretive gloss. There's little to choose among them, so the pioneering accounts retain the greatest interest.

The very first of Mercury's famed Living Presence LPs (MG50000) became known as a hi-fi demonstration disc, presenting the Pictures by Rafael Kubelik and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through a single microphone and full-track tape for a wonderfully natural image (mono, of course), fully detailed with natural resonance. (Unfortunately, due to deterioration of the master tape, only a depreciated shadow of the original LP remains on the current transfer on Mercury CD 434 378.) A similarly incisive but better preserved 1953 recording by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (BMG 60287) drew further accolades, although his magnificent 1948 La Scala concert (Radio Years 99 or Originals 852) had been more supple and elating, despite rather crude sound. The advent of stereo boosted the technology and marketing stakes yet higher.

Among the first to take advantage of the new aural depth with a Pictures recording were Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony in RCA's Living Stereo (BMG 61958), Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Columbia's 360 Degree Sound (SMK 47495) and Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Decca/London's Full Frequency Stereophonic Sound (no CD transfer). And for those who insist upon digital sound, the very latest version by Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic (Philips 468 526) is superbly dramatic and richly recorded. But, as in any art ripe with ego, there are notable exceptions to the mainstream approach. By availing themselves of 45 minutes in lieu of the usual half-hour, Sergiu Celibidache and the Munich Philharmonic (EMI 56516 or Artists Live FED 017) transform the usual whirlwind tour through an art gallery into a probing study of transitory mood and deep meditations on the scope of human activity.

The Pictures proved a natural attraction for master colorist and sound enthusiast Leopold Stokowski, who undertook his own symphonic transcription in 1939. Omitting two of the pictures, he imparts a more Slavic and overtly dramatic texture while giving fuller rein to the scope of orchestral sound. (Ravel, after all, was a rather restrained and efficient French impressionist.) Although he declined to depart from the chicks' fluttery woodwinds or the catacombs' booming brass, much of the rest seems a determined break from Ravel's instrumentation wherever possible; thus, his opening promenade sounds in richly harmonized strings rather than a brass fanfare and the witch's hut replaces sharp tympani accents with brass snarls. Stokowski's version is conveyed well in his final 1965 studio recording with the New Philharmonia (London 443 898) and an even more vibrant 1963 BBC concert (Music and Arts 765). Stokowski's successor at the helm of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cemented his leadership with a commission for a new Pictures.

The smooth swells and rich textures of the 1937 orchestration by the orchestra's bass-clarinetist Lucien Cailliet is custom-fitted to the Philadelphians' distinctive sound (Biddulph 046). If Stokowski's transcription treated the orchestra as a mammoth virtuoso instrument, pianist Vladimir Horowitz applied a similar outlook to his own adaptation that was clearly attuned to project his fabulous technical wizardry. In his legendary hands, the culmination at the great gate of Kiev ends in a dazzling display of rolling chords, glittery descant accents and tremelos, all managing to suggest a full range of orchestral effects through the unadulterated sound and resources of the keyboard. And what about the unadorned piano version that started it all? Although there had been others, it was a recording of an extraordinary 1958 Sviatoslav Richter recital in Sofia, Bulgaria (Philips 464 734) that refocused public attention on the merit of the original.

Intense, full of nuance, supremely poised and Russian to the core, Richter's masterful performance fully vindicated Mussorgsky's work as a masterpiece in its own right, without need of translation, embellishment or improvement. Hartmann would have been proud of his friend's work! Copyright 2002 by Peter Gutmann Modest Mussorgsky - Biography - IMDb Modest Mussorgsky Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (2) | Trivia (1) Overview (3) Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky Mini Bio (2) In 1856 Moussorgsky joined the Russian army where he met the piano player and composer 'Balakirev' who taught him composition. As he could not finish his studies in music, Moussorgsky did not know all stylistic means of composition perfectly and thus had to follow his instinct in his works becoming the pathmaker of the musical impressionism as well as expressionism: He was the first to compose realistic pictures, e.g. "Pictures at an Exhibition". Having no success during his lifetime Moussorgsky spent all of his fortune ending up a poor man addicted to alcohol.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Volker Boehm Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born on March 21, 1839, in his ancestral estate of Karevo, Pskov province, Russia. He was the 30th generation from Rurik the Great, the first King of ancient Kiev Rus. Mussorgsky's family were wealthy landowners and belonged to Russian landed gentry. Young Mussorgsky studied piano from the age of six under the tutelage of his mother, who herself was a trained pianist. At the age of nine he was able to perform pieces by Franz Liszt and a piano concerto by John Field in public. At ten he began his studies in St. Petersburg's elite Peterschule (St. Peter's School), where his piano teacher was virtuoso Anton Herke. In 1852, at the age of 12, Mussorgsky published a piano piece titled "Porte-enseigne Polka". Around that time he was described by Alexandr Borodin as an "elegant piano-playing dilettante" at a private party. Mussorgsky continued his music studies while attending the Cadet School of the Imperial Guards.

He graduated from the school in 1856 and was posted to the Imperial Guards Regiment in St. Petersburg. In 1857, through his fellow officer Ceasar Cui, Mussorgsky met composers Alexander Dargomyzsky and Mili Balakirew . He studied composition under Balakirev, including the piano sonatas and symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven . At that time Mussorgsky's own compositions were leaning more towards the foreign models: his four-hand piano sonata (1860) and "Intermezzo in modo classico" for piano solo were composed as European-sounding pieces. Soon Mussorgsky had freed himself from the influences of Balkirev and became involved in a production of "A Life for the Tsar", an opera by Mikhail Glinka . He also worked on two original operas: from 1858-61 he was writing "Oedipus in Athens" and from 1863-66 he composed "Salammbo", based on the eponymous novel by Gustave Flaubert .

He suffered a major emotional trauma, caused by the loss of the family estate after the emancipation of serfs in 1861, forcing Mussorgsky to move and take a clerical job in St. Petersburg. In 1865 his beloved mother died; Mussorgsky suffered from anxiety and depression, and had his first serious bout of alcoholism. At that time he lived in a commune with six other men in St. Petersburg. He was influenced by the writings of provocative revolutionary Nikolay Chernyshevskiy , known for the assertion that, in art, "form and content are opposites," and who also coined the phrase "the worse the better" to indicate that the worse the social conditions became for the poor, the more inclined they would be to revolt. Being torn between his service and his passion for music, Mussorgsky quit his job and focused on his new composition, a symphonic poem "A Night on Bald Mountain". After it was rejected by Balakirev in 1867, Moussorgsky fell into a deeper depression. He suffered from a bout of dipsomania and was called "almost an idiot" by nationalists Balakirev and Stasov.

However, he managed to overcome his problem and re-entered government service. From 1870-72 he worked on "Boris Godunov", an opera based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin . The first version was rejected by the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre because of its lack of any "prima donna" role. At that time Mussorgsky was a roommate of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov , who helped to make changes that even exceeded those requested by the Mariinsky Theatre. "Boris Godunov" premiered in 1874, but after official criticism of Mussorgsky's music, it received only a dozen performances. He split from the nationalistic circle of Balakirev and suffered another bout of depression after the death of his friend, artist Viktor Hartmann. In memory of Hartmann he wrote the piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition", a musical interpretation of Hartmann's pictures, which inspired Mussorgsky to break some old rules of piano playing. Mussorgsky's later works, "Songs and Dances of Death" and the opera "Khovanshchina", were sparks of a genius in an ailing body.

The music impressed his frie+nds and his superiors at the government office, where he was allowed to take longer vacations to go on concert tours. He toured and concertized with singer Darya Leonova. However, the decline in his health was neglected and led to complications and frequent epileptic seizures. He started drinking again and was dismissed from government service in January of 1880. Loyal Leonova helped provide him with concert gigs and a home. They made successful performances during December of 1880. In February of 1881 Mussorgsky suffered from epileptic seizures. He caught pneumonia and was hospitalized in the Imperial Military Hospital in St. Petersburg. At that time Ilya Repin painted the famous portrait of Mussorgsky in a hospital robe, in what were to be the last days of the composer's life. Modest Mussorgsky died on March 28, 1881, in St. Petersburg, and was laid to rest in the Necropolis of Masters of Art in St. Aleksandr Nevsky Convent in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Mussorgsky's Charming Pictures at an Exhibition Contact Mussorgsky's Charming Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition is a wonderfully colorful collection of musical images. Each one was inspired by a painting by the composer's friend, a talented artist named Victor Hartmann. Mussorgsky was devastated by the 1873 death of Hartmann, a close friend artist with similar ideals. Hartmann was only 39 (similar to age at which Mussorgsky eventually died at). Russian artistic society was shocked too, and organized a massive exhibit of Hartmann's works in 1874 as a memorial. Mussorgsky attended, and was so fired up with enthusiasm and respect for his lost friend that he wrote Pictures at an Exhibition in only six weeks! Each piece in Mussorgksy's Pictures at an Exhibition is based on imaginative paintings, sketches, and costume designs which came from Hartmann's travels in Europe. Mussorgsky's unpretentious, deeply Russian music was the perfect fit for Hartmann's colorful and highly decorative (i.e. impractical) pictures. Mussorgsky's original wasn't published until years and years after he died though.

It only really became well-known after Maurice Ravel's 1922 orchestral version (even though dozens of other musicians have orchestrated it). Pieces in the Suite Here are the pieces in Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition... Promenade. The entire collection is stuck together using this clever trick. It's a happy little jaunt, depicting a curious gallery-viewer's wanderings around the exhibits. Gnomus. (Latin for 'gnome'). Inspired by a design for a wooden nutcracker in the shape of a gnome. This piece is ugly and slightly sad, like the gnome must have appeared. The Old Castle. After another promenade, we come to this piece. It was inspired by a sketch of a beautiful rustic castle Hartmann drew when he visited Italy. The melody evokes a medieval troubadour sadly singing in front of the castle. Tuileries. After another ambling promenade, we arrive at this whimsical and light-hearted piece. It's a cheeky little piece, depicting cheerful children playing games and arguing in the Tuileries garden in Paris. The Oxen. A plodding piece, depicting the slow rumble of a Polish ox cart through mud. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.

This comes after yet another repetition of the promenade theme. Mussorgsky was inspired by Hartmann's costume designs for a ballet, with children in egg-suit costumes. Sounds bizarre, but this is Russian ballet we're talking about... anyway, the music is delightfully frantic. Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle. (or Two Jews, Rich and Poor) A semi-insulting caricature, depicting two jews. It was inspired by two sketches Hartmann drew in Poland. Samuel Goldberg is the rich Jew: Fat, decked out in a fur hat and speaking with authority. Schmuyle is the poor, whining jew, portrayed by yammering high notes. The Marketplace at Limoges. This short piece evokes a bustling French marketplace, packed with farmwives. Mussorgsky even put fragments of imagined gossip on the original manuscript (but then crossed them out!). The Catacombs. An eerie tour through the dark catacombs of Paris, surrounded by piles of skulls. Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua. (with the dead in a dead language). this is the onl piece in the suite not inspired by an image.

it follows on the previous piece, and is an introspective meditation on Hartmann's death. Baba Yaga - The Hut on Chicken's Legs. Baba Yaga is an evil witch from Russian mythology, who eats people and crushes their bones. The devilish music depicts her unearthly home, a 'hut on chicken's legs', which she uses to trap victims lost in the woods. The Great Gate of Kiev. This majestic piece was inspired by Hartmann's design for a grand golden gate for Kiev (capital of the Ukraine). The design was for a competition to celebrate the escape of the Tsar from an assassination. Hartmann's picture was a near-masterpiece, widely acclaimed, and he probably would have won the competition if it hadn't been cancelled! I think Mussorgsky's music for this finale can only be described as 'epic', with a gloriously powerful restatement of the Promenade theme. Click to see more of Hartmann's inspirational drawings and designs . Comparison of Orchestrations Since there are loads of orchestrated versions of Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, I thought it would interesting to compare the opening Promenade melody of a few of them...

First is Maurice Ravel's version: And finally one by Lawrence Leonard: Then one by Sir Henry Wood: Which do you prefer? I think my favorite is Henry Wood's. Good Recordings I highly recommend the Sviatoslav Richter recital recording of the piano version from 1958 (on Philips). He breathes a powerful blast of life into the pieces and gives them almost as much color as the physical paintings they were inspired by. If there's one thing I don't like though, it's that I find his tempos a bit too mechanical. Still great though! And as for the orchestral version of Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, my recommendation has to be Valery Gergiev conducting the Wiener Philharmonia (also on Philips!). It's an absorbing and magical experience, captured wonderfully in high quality sound.

Question: Who composed the musical work "Pictures at an Exhibition"?
Answer: Modest Mussorgsky